


Fatherhood in the New Millennium (or, Use a Great Ball, Stupid)

by 8sword



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Characters Playing Pokemon GO, Gen, batfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8381701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: Noon finds them at Robinson Park, where Bruce drives around for twenty-five minutes just to find a spot to park. Thankfully (and he means that with the greatest possible sarcasm), the time was not wasted, as they all managed to catch an apparently extremely rare Tauros during the search.(In which Bruce is wrangled into taking the Batkids Pokémon hunting.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I want to write the Batkids into everything ever. Reblog if you agree.

 

Bruce comes into the cave one evening and every one of his children save Jason is clustered next to the giant penny, shouting strange things like “That’s my _fifth_ Pokéball!” “You gotta use a Great Ball, stupid!” “Why is mine only a level 253 and Cass’s is 400?”

He looks at Alfred. “What,” he says flatly.

Alfred extracts his own phone from his pocket, tilting the screen to show Bruce. “Pokémon Go, sir.”

Bruce’s brow creases. He had heard the newscasts about the game, because it was humanly impossible to have missed the countless soundbytes about it, but had never conceived that it would be something that would permeate his own home. Although, considering how quickly (and destructively) Cards Against Humanity had spread through his children (like wildfire), perhaps his (lack of) expectation had been naïve.

Still. He ignores the knot of shouting children and young adults and goes to the computer, sitting down. He gets perhaps seven minutes of undisturbed work done before Cass, holding her phone out in front of her, uses the back of his chair as a foothold to climb onto the top of the Bat computer’s mainframe. He raises an eyebrow up at her, but she pays no heed.

“Cass has got something!” Steph cries, and they all race after her, gathering around Bruce’s chair. Bruce grimaces at his screen.

“Oh my God, it’s an Onyx!” Dick cries. “I’ve never even SEEN one before!”

“It’s a level 676,” Damian says.

“Mine’s only a 300,” Steph complains.

“Perhaps you should start catching more than just Oddishes, Fatgirl,” Damian says smugly.

Not taking his eyes from his phone screen, Dick flicks his ear in reproach.

“Grayson!” Damian cries, affronted. “You threw off my toss!”

“So? Catch it again.”

“It ran!”

Bruce sighs as Damian lunges for Dick, who laughingly flips out of the way. Damian charges after him, both of them finding their way onto the dinosaur as Damian’s shouted threats of eviscerating Grayson echo through the cave.

“Wow. He’s almost as mad as the time Dick stole that gym from under him,” Steph says to Tim.

Cass is shaking her head. “Dishonorable.”

Bruce has continued to raise his eyebrows at the three of them, but they still haven’t seemed to notice, knotted around his chair, with Steph propping her elbow on the headrest. “When are you all going to move and let me work?”

They all look over as though noticing his presence for the first time.

“Oh. Hi, Bruce,” Tim says.

“Did you know the Manor is a Pokestop?” Steph wants to know.

Bruce looks at Alfred.

Alfred shakes his head mournfully. “I could do nothing about it, sir.”

“Lucius,” Bruce says. He taps a message into his phone.

“No, don’t de-Stop us!” Steph whines.

“I am going to release a lure,” Cass says.

“HEY!” Tim shouts in the vicinity of where Damian is still chasing Dick, whose laughter rings back at them. “CASS IS SETTING OFF A LURE!”

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to the Watchtower.”

“Omg,” he hears Steph say beside her. “Do you think they have any Porygons in space?”

 

A few nights later, he notices that Robin has fallen behind. He glances over his shoulder and sees the telltale glow of an activated phone screen before Robin shoves it back into his belt.

He waits.

“It was an Onyx!” Robin says defensively.

Batman growls.

 

Saturday morning finds the breakfast table fully populated. And. _Loudly_ populated.

Damian is looking smug as Bruce sits in his chair at the head of the table. “You have the most levels, Drake, it’s only appropriate sportsmanship that you drive.”

“And let the rest of you sabotage me by deleting all my Revives? I don’t think so.”

“We would _not_ do that,” Steph and Dick say in unison, then grin at each other. Sneakily.

“And yet you have before.” Tim crosses his arms. “I’m _not_ driving.”

“Well, I’m a lower level than all of you,” Dick says. “So I shouldn’t have to drive.”

“Technically, I’m dead, so I can’t drive,” Steph asserts.

All eyes go to Cass. She shakes her head, miming turning a driving wheel and then making an explosion gesture and sound effect with her hands.

“Why can’t Alfred drive you?”

All their heads swivel to the head of the table. He doesn’t like the frank consideration on Dick and Damian’s faces.

“Alfred says he doesn’t want to enable us,” Steph says.

“But _you_ will, won’t you, B?” Dick activates Pleading Blue Eyes.

“If you do this for us, we won’t hunt on patrol anymore,” Tim adds.

“Much,” Steph says.

Cass nods.

“Please, Father?”

Bruce meets Damian’s blue eyes, darker than Dick’s but no less manipulatively pleading. He has a very strong premonition he’s going to regret this. But—

“Hnn.”

 

They break to shower and get dressed. Tim and Damian fight over who gets the bathroom with the larger shower cubicle. Bruce already feels tired.

There’s an outfit laid out on his bed when he gets out of his own shower, having foregone a shave. It consists of black jeans and a Superman t-shirt, which is clearly Dick’s work. He puts on the jeans and finds a gray Bludhaven Police Department t-shirt, given to him by Dick more as a joke than a gift years ago, to wear instead. The scuffed utility boots and a pair of cheap sunglasses in which Brucie Wayne wouldn’t be caught dead complete the Regular Old Dad, Nothing to See Here look.

The kids are all waiting in the garage, easily heard from the kitchen where Bruce accepts a thermos of coffee from Alfred, whose eyes are twinkling far too much for comfort. He takes a sip as he steps into the cavernous space, and nearly snorts it up his nose when he sees the group of them gathered in front of a bright red minivan he _definitely_ did not buy.

“Bruce!” Dick shouts.

Bruce’s eyes travel across them. Dick, Tim, Steph, Cass and Damian have been joined by Jason, who is standing a little apart from the group, also with his phone out, looking surprisingly un-mutinous in a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. It has a yellow symbol on it that Bruce doesn’t recognize, and another few seconds’ study reveals that they are all wearing black shirts with symbols on them: Dick is wearing a tank top with a yellow symbol like Jason’s; Damian and Tim’s t-shirts have matching blue symbols; and Steph and Cass both have red symbols, as well as matching red wrist bands and head bands like they’re about to teach a fitness class from the eighties. Damian doesn’t appear pleased with the fact that he and Tim match, frowning thunderously at the older boy as Tim pointedly ignores him, attention on his phone.

“All right!” Dick claps his hands together. “Checklist time. Spare power packs?”

Steph and Cass raise theirs triumphantly; the others do the same halfheartedly. Jason is avoiding Bruce’s eyes.

“Water bottles?”

Again the raising of supplies.

“Jason, a flask is not a water bottle.”

“It is if there’s water in it!”

“ _Is_ there water in it?”

A grumbled response.

“Get rid of it,” Dick orders. “You can have one of my spare bottles, take the Green Lantern one.”

“Hell no, I’m not taking the Green Lantern one.”

“You can’t have the Wonder Woman one—Jay, that’s mine, put it back!”

Stephanie takes over the checklist, as Dick and Jason are now trapped in a scuffle over the themed water bottles. “Sunscreen?”

Cass aims a spray of it at Tim, who yelps.

“Damian, I didn’t see you put any on,” says Dick, who has emerged from the scuffle picking out the atomic wedgie Jason gave him but in jealous possession of the Wonder Woman bottle, clutched tightly to his chest.

“I’m from the _desert_ , I don’t need sunscreen.”

“I’m browner than you, and you don’t see me neglecting my sunscreen! Being from the desert doesn’t mean you can’t get melanoma! Cass?”

A dab of white appears on Damian’s nose, Cass’s movement having been too fast for any of them to see, although Bruce flatters himself that he glimpsed at least the end of it. Damian glowers mightily but doesn’t move as Cass then sprays down his arms and legs. He’s wearing shorts with his t-shirt, and a baseball cap, prompting Jason to mutter, “He looks just like Youngster,” to Tim, who snickers.

“Aaaaaaannnnd—HATS!” Dick proffers his own and spins it backward. “Who’s ready to catch some Pokémon?!”

“Oh my God, I would not have agreed to this if I’d known it was going to be such a nerdfest,” Jason says.

“You literally jumped and demanded to come when you found out someone else would be doing the driving,” Steph says.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it would be—” Jason’s eyes flick to Bruce. He mutters, “I figured it would be Alfie.”

“The civilian’s identity doesn’t matter,” Dick says. “Today, he is our chauffeur. Oh, I have a hat for you, too, Bruce.” He plops a red and white baseball cap on Bruce’s head. “Okay, who has the scoreboard?”

Cass holds up a white board.

“Tim and Jason are currently neck and neck at level 28,” Dick intones. “The baby ninjas are tied at level 21. Steph is level 19, and I—” He points at himself, “am level 16. Because some of us actually have to work for a living and can’t chase Pokémon all day.”

“You are literally the laziest person here,” Tim says as Jason snorts.

Dick points at him. “Just for that you lose any claim to shotgun. Cass?”

“There will be a gym prize and an individual trainer prize,” Cass says. The words are clearly and carefully enunciated; Dick is watching her with pride and affection, and Bruce realizes they must have practiced this. Pride and affection swell up inside him like indigestion. “The individual prize will be getting to drive the Batmobile for one night—”

“What?” Bruce says.

“—unless Damian wins,” Cass amends. “He gets a different prize because he is still too little.”

“I’ve driven the Batmobile successfully on numerous occasions,” Damian says. “Not to mention I’ve repaired it more times than any of you. _And_ designed the new Batjet.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a badass, we get it.” Jason waves a dismissive hand. “Are we gonna actually _leave_ anytime soon?”

 

There is, predictably, a scuffle over seating arrangements. Cass and Steph claim the backseat happily enough, but Damian doesn’t want to sit next to Tim, or Jason, and Jason doesn’t see why the smallest of them should get shotgun, goddammit, but Dick insists that Tim can’t have shotgun because of his hurtful words earlier. In the end, Damian is settled smugly in the passenger seat next to his father, and Jason, Tim, and Dick are squeezed into the middle row of the mini-van.

“I told you we should’ve gotten the Pilot,” Steph calls to Dick, who says, “I know, but the temptation of seeing Bruce drive a mini-van was too great to resist.”

Bruce rolls his eyes.

The Bluetooth loads as the garage door rolls open in front of them. Beyoncé begins to wail from the speakers.

“Dick, I swear to God,” Jason says.

“Sorry,” Tim says. “That’s mine.”

“Do you have a problem with Queen Bey, Jason?” says Steph from the backseat. “Because I will fight you.”

“Me too,” Cass says.

“Father, I believe that, as shotgun, I should pick the music,” Damian says loudly.

“Um, no,” says Tim.

Damian ignores him and, somehow, disables the Bluetooth’s reception of Tim’s device. His own device, appearing on the console screen as _Goliath_ , begins to play instrumental music which is eventually recognizable as the Pacific Rim theme. All parties are mollified. (Except Bruce. Because Dick starts to hum loudly and obnoxiously in time to the crescendos and decrescendos of the score.)

The Pokémon Stops start in earnest as they pull into the city proper. The van fills with chime upon chime as Pokéballs and potions are stowed into virtual bags.

“My bag is full!”

“Get rid of some of your berries, idiot,” Jason says.

“How do you get rid of them?!”

“Oh my god, here.” Damian twists around in the passenger seat to grab Dick’s phone and show him.

“Thanks, Dami,” Dick begins to say, and is cut off by a chorus of shouts as all their phones _bing_ at once.

“B, you’re going too fast!” Tim, Steph and Jay all cry in unison.

Bruce promptly slows to twenty miles an hour, glancing in the rearview mirror. All faces are turned studiously downward, brows furrowed in concentration—a glance sideways reveals Damian doing the same underneath the bill of his cap. He looks young—looks his age, Bruce realizes, and watches him until a horn honking behind him returns his attention to the road.

Tim directs him to the main library, where apparently a collection of stops and also two gyms are available for conquest. Bruce pulls into a parallel spot on the curb, and the kids all pile out, wandering in several different directions, their attention on their phones.

Bruce dials Alfred on the Bluetooth.

There is barely concealed laughter in the retainer’s voice. “How are you faring, Master Bruce?”

“You could have warned me, Alfred.”

“I feel this to be an inevitable part of fatherhood in the new millennium, sir.”

“Hnn.” Bruce watches Stephanie jump up and down as she swipes excitedly on her phone. Damian runs over to catch whatever it is, too. “We’re sure this isn’t some plot?”

“Not all things which are enjoyable are rooted a megalomaniac’s attempt at world domination,” Alfred says imperturbably. “However, perhaps you should sample the game yourself to make sure.”

“There’s the megalomaniacal plan,” Bruce says, and Alfred laughs.

“Goodbye, sir.”

After only about another ten minutes, the kids start to clamber back into the car, one after another. “Where next?” Bruce asks, glancing at Dick.

“Tim?” Dick says.

“Bus station,” Tim announces. “There have been Machops sighted there.”

 

Bruce never fully appreciated how big Gotham’s downtown and midtown area were. One would think that, having spent nights, some of them interminable, running, grapple-hooking, and motoring in and around the areas, he would have unsurprised, but it’s quite a different thing to shuttle slowly from one landmark to another, stopping every few minutes to let a vanload of children get out and then back on, like an incredibly long and boring game of leap-frog.

He contemplates loading the van with the not-yet-patented self-driving car software that Wayne Enterprises just bought from Google in order to escape.

Noon finds them at Robinson Park, where Bruce drove around for twenty-five minutes just to find a spot to park. Thankfully (and he means that with the greatest possible sarcasm), the time was not wasted, as they all managed to catch an apparently extremely rare Tauros during the search.

The park isn’t the most benign location for Steph, and he watches her closely as they pile out of the car, but she seems okay, hopping excitedly onto Cass’s back as she motions wildly with her phone. Damian rushes to catch up with them, and Dick sits down right in the middle of a mulched area, brow puckered in concentration on his phone.

Bruce finds a nearby bench to settle on, pulling his cap’s bill lower over his face to block out the bright midday glare. The fountain a few hundred feet away appears to be a central gathering point; numerous people, adults and children alike, are gathered around it, swiping at their phone screens. Two shout, one in glee and one in a groan, and Bruce, squinting, notes that Tim is among their number, elbow to elbow with a dark-skinned boy in a yellow jacket.

About ten minutes in, each of the kids except for Jason and Tim dart over to take a picture of Bruce, snickering. Bruce allows it, not sure what they’re doing but well aware that it’s hardly going to be anything to his credit, until his own phone chimes with a notification. There’s a message from Clark; it contains a photograph of himself with a computer-generated fluffy cat-rabbit-looking thing perched on top of his head.

 **Clark** : Looks like a fun Saturday.

 **Bruce** : You have no idea.

It can’t be more than a minute later that a breath of air blows the hair from along the nape of his neck and a shadow falls over his own on the pavement. He glances up as Clark, in weekend casual jeans, throws back his head and laughs.

“Laughing at my pain?” he says dryly when Clark’s gotten it out of his system.

“Hard not to,” Clark chuckles, lowering himself onto the bench a few inches away. “Their Instagrams are full of pictures of you with those things on your head.” He proffers his phone. “My favorite is the one with Jynx. Cass has a real photographer’s eye.”

Bruce nearly smiles as he looks at the photo. “I didn’t realize what I was getting into today,” he says ruefully.

“Want some company?” Clark stretches his legs out, crossing his arms comfortably over his chest.

“Hn.”

“Father!” Damian comes running toward them. He nearly checks at the sight of Clark, then clearly decides to ignore him. “I caught a Growlithe!”

“Sounds ferocious,” Bruce says.

Damian grins, an almost feral expression, and runs back into the midst of a knot of boys his age beside the fountain in the middle of the green.

Clark tilts his phone toward Bruce again. It shows a fluffy orange dog-tiger thing with a tan mane. The label under it says, _Growlithe_.

“I was right,” Bruce says. “Very ferocious.”

Clark smiles and tilts his head back to enjoy the sunshine. Bruce lets his eyes drift around the green, watching the kids. Cass is patrolling the perimeter in a clockwise circuit while Steph goes counterclockwise, their red headbands darkening with sweat. Dick is hanging by his legs from a tree branch in the shade, talking animatedly to some college-aged kids as they all hold their phones in front of them, and, not far away, Tim stands toe to toe with a tall girl with a purple Mohawk, both their phones locked on their phones with expressions on their faces that suggest they are locked in one of the battles Dick mentioned this morning.

It takes a longer time for his eyes to find Jason. His second oldest son is crouched down next to a little girl and boy, neither of whom can be much older than ten, with his own phone peeking out of his back pocket as he makes flicking motions on their phone to show them something. Their faces are excited as they watch over his shoulder, and then the little boy jumps up and down in excitement.

Jason hands them back the phone and gives them a salute before standing back up and taking his phone out of his pocket to continue down the path deeper into the wooded area of the park.

“I wondered if he would get back into it.”

Bruce glances over. His brow rises in inquiry.

Clark laughs. “Don’t tell me you forgot how obsessed he was with the video game when he was a kid.”

Bruce’s brow furrows.

“Really?” Clark says in disbelief. “He saved up forever to buy it. He kept offering to do my yardwork for five bucks a week, I had to break it to him that I lived in an apartment. I took him to Ma’s a few times to muck out the stables instead. I think Diana let him wash the Javelin.”

“He…” Bruce blinks rapidly. “What?”

Clark’s expression of surprise grows. “The Pokémon game. That—” He mimes the motion with his hands, “Game boy thing.”

Bruce stares at Jason. He has stopped to talk to another teenager in a yellow shirt, their heads bent together in rapt discussion over their phones. “I would have bought it for him.”

Clark doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. It’s quite easy for Bruce to remember how fiercely protective Jason had been of his independence in those days, not so unlike now; how he would sooner wear a jacket to threads than ask Bruce for a new one. Of course he would have offered to do odd jobs for the Justice League to earn money for a game he wanted instead of ask Bruce to buy it for him.

 

The day ends at a greasy pizza place a few blocks from the park, where they push together all the tiny two-person tables on the street-facing patio to accommodate their number. Bruce sits squeezed at one end of the table between Clark and Damian, the latter of whom looks extremely pleased when an entire vegetarian pizza is placed in front of him, and less pleased when Clark requests a slice of it. It’s a mark of how much he has enjoyed the day that he magnanimously decrees that the Alien may have One Slice.

Meanwhile at the other end of the table, Tim peels the chili peppers off his supreme pizza and puts them on Jason’s plate as Jason jealously knocks aside Dick’s octopus-armed attempts to steal the mushrooms from his slice. Cass and Stephanie make numerous trips back and forth to the soda fountain to make increasingly strange-colored mixtures of sodas.

Dick raps on the side of his Styrofoam cup with his plastic fork, making no noise whatsoever. “All right!” he shouts. “Time to announce the winners!”

Cass stands. She is sitting next to Jason, and standing up, her head only barely clears his, so she rests a hand on his shoulder and climbs up to stand on the back of his chair. He rolls his eyes but lifts his hands automatically to hold her ankles securely. Cass pats his head in indulgent thanks.

“The winning gym team,” she announces in her deliberate, clear voice, “is Team Mystic, having won seven gyms today.”

Tim and Damian both smirk. Dick hoots and knocks Damian’s hat off. Damian’s smirk momentarily flickers into a proud grin before becoming haughty again.

“They win a romantic seven-day cruise complete with spa package to Norway,” Cass continues, completely straight-faced. Dick explodes in laughter and Stephanie wolf-whistles before doing the same. Jason pounds the table in appreciation.

“One-way!” Steph shouts. “Tell them it’s one-way!”

“Don’t mind them, Drake,” Damian says regally above the racket of hilarity. “They’re merely envious.”

Tim pours some of Cass’s cola-orange-lemonade-root beer mix on Dick’s head. “That’s obvious.”

Bruce slides another twenty dollars under the napkin dispenser to add to the tip he already placed there for the wait staff. Clark sees this and laughs harder.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Cass announces once Dick has stripped his shirt off, wrung it out, and shaken his sopping hair out, dog-style, across the whole table. “The individual trainer prize goes to me. I caught fifty-eight Pokémon.”

The table erupts in cheers. Cass beams. Even Damian is clapping, and Jason puts his fingers into his mouth and blows a whistle that has people at the taco truck across the street wincing. Cass beams brighter. Dick bounces out of his seat and holds out his arms: Cass leaps lightly off of Jason’s shoulders and into them to be spun around victoriously.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Jason protests. “No stealing my sister, Grayson!” and Steph says, “No worries, Jason, you’ve always got me,” and sits on top of him.

Bruce meets Cass’s bright eyes and orders them all tiramisu.

 

Clark heads to the Watchtower for Monitor duty after accompanying them back to the Manor. Jason slips silently away before they head inside, and Cass informs Bruce that she will be collecting on her winnings next weekend before heading to Stephanie’s for their weekly sleepover. Only Dick, Tim and Damian accompany Bruce inside, and they all head immediately for the cave.

“The night looks quiet,” says Bruce, who has been tracking these things on his watch. “You two catch up on sleep and homework.”

“But,” Damian begins.

“If you don’t get enough sleep you’ll get acne, li’l D,” Dick says.

Damian looks affronted. “I will _never_ get acne—”

“Is that a white head I see?” Tim interjects, peering at Damian’s chin.

Damian bristles. “DRAKE—”

Tim darts upstairs and Damian charges after him.

Dick follows Bruce downstairs. “So easy to manipulate,” he sighs happily.

“He had fun today,” Bruce says.

“He did,” Dick says. He has a gleam in his eye. “I think we all did, don’t you?”

“Hnn,” Bruce says.

They change into their gear. Just before he pulls his cowl over his head, Bruce says, “Dick.”

Nightwing glances over. His mask is already on, his escrima sticks being slid into the holster on his back. “Yeah?”

“Did you know about Jason and this...game. When it came out in his childhood.”

Nightwing rubs his jaw. “I didn’t know he was such a fan when he was a kid. But when the news started about this game coming out, he was crazy pumped. I guess he and Tim were both obsessed back in the day.” He grins affectionately. “Little nerds.”

“Hnn.”

 

Jason shows up in the cave the next weekend, when Cass has taken the Batmobile out for her earned night and the others have gone out on their respective motorcycles to watch. He’s holding a box in his arm.

“This,” he sets a Blastoise and Charizard 20th Anniversary Edition Nintendo 3DS box down on the Batcomputer console with a loud thump, “was in my mailbox.”

“Was it,” Bruce says mildly.

Jason keeps his big scarred hand on top of the box. “I don’t need it,” he says eventually. “I still have my—my Game Boy Color. Upstairs. Alfie kept it.”

A silence.

“I didn’t know,” Bruce says. Looking at the shimmering holographic box with Jason’s scarred grown-up hand on top of it. “I would have bought them for you, Jason.”

There is another silence.

“Well,” Jason says, and removes his hand from the box, “maybe Damian would like it.”

It’s not quite a rejection. Because then he says, “Maybe I’ll claim shotgun next time.”

Bruce smiles.

 

It’s only when he’s crawling under his covers that night that he realizes the implications of that statement. He picks up his phone and types a message to Jason’s most recent cell number.

 **Bruce** : There will NOT be a next time.

 **Jason** : . . .

 **Jason** : 

 

 


End file.
